The blond girl waved her hand, opened the ornate feather fan in her hand to cover half of her face, and looked at Wellington with some unkind eyes.
After all, she brought Jenkins. Jenkins is just a small person, and to embarrass him here is to embarrass her.
Seeing no objection, in an atmosphere of silence, the invited writers began to tell their stories one after another.
Probably no one thought that the theme of the final story in this reading salon would be a horror story. Therefore, although the logic of most of the stories is fairly smooth, the content of the stories is always inseparable from traditions such as resurrection in the cemetery and evil sacrifices.
But everyone still listened with gusto. In the quiet room, there was only the occasional crackling of firewood in the fireplace, and a slightly low-pitched male or female voice told stories related to "corpse", "ghost" and "darkness".
This kind of atmosphere is indeed very immersive, even if the story is a little worse, it can be made up for by the atmosphere.
But Jenkins felt that the temperature in the room had dropped a bit, and he twisted his body uneasily. From the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse that Miss Hesha's attention was not on the writer in front of the fireplace at this time, but turned her head to look outside.
Through the undrawn, richly embroidered knit curtains, Jenkins saw a dark eye peering inward.
His eyes were full of dead silence.
"A spirit body that just happened to pass by?"
Jenkins listened to the man in front of the fireplace describing the dampness of the cemetery at night with an unchanged expression, thinking in his heart whether he should take another opportunity to get rid of the peeping tom outside.
Faint gray smoke seeps into the room along the gaps in the windows, and the fire in the fireplace flickers, and the light seems to be getting weaker and weaker.
Miss Michel beside Jenkins subconsciously raised her right hand and covered her clean left arm. She also felt the temperature change.
Before Jenkins could move, Miss Hesha's drooping right hand beat regularly in the air, which seemed to be an unknown melody.
Jenkins saw a yellow spot in front of her, twinkling like stars in the sky.
In an instant, the gray mist and the eyes outside the window disappeared, and the burning wood in the fireplace shook a few times, making a crackling sound, as if breaking the weird atmosphere in the room.
Many people breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that the oppressive feeling shrouded in their hearts was much less, but they couldn't find the reason.
Jenkins also breathed a sigh of relief and ignored the matter.
The storytellers went to the rug in front of the fireplace one by one, sat down cross-legged, and returned to their seats one by one, and the last one was of course Jenkins.
He stood up, smiled at Miss Michel and Miss Hesha beside him, then cleared his throat and started his story.
"That's a story I heard from my neighbor, Aunt Susan Spence, whose family lives down town in Squirrel Lane, and it's a mess."
He said in a voice with some Nolan dialect.
The young gentlemen and ladies were stunned for a moment. Most of the beginnings of other people's stories started a long, long time ago. Why is this directly located in the city of Nolan
"Aunt Susan's next door was a young man who was studying painting at the Nolan School of Art, and Aunt Susan called him Hardy."
Jenkins noticed that the dot of light in front of Miss Hessa lit up again, this time a different one.
An imperceptible feeling of fear rising from the heart suddenly appeared, but it was very, very weak.
This is somewhat similar to the [Fear Art] that he and his father encountered in the basement of the castle, but the effects of the two are very different.
"Create the atmosphere for me?"
With that thought in his mind, the stories kept coming out of his mouth.
"Mr. Hardy has a very loving girlfriend who also lives in a slum in the lower city, earning a living by washing clothes for people and pasting matchboxes."
Jenkins originally wanted to say that he was a flower girl, but stopped when he reached his mouth. The psychological shadow brought by A-01-2-0198 has not completely disappeared.
"Someday."
Pause for a moment.
"She died, head down, from the clock tower in the center of Nolan City. Given that there are still many women present, I can't describe the red and white **** after the head is broken. What is it? gone."
No one spoke, but as expected, he heard a slight retching sound.
"Mr. Hardy was in great pain, and the police attributed the death of the poor lady to suicide, which made him even more sad. On the seventh night after her death, Mr. Hardy, who was diligently practicing his painting skills at home, Hearing the sound of bang bang bang coming from outside the door, he opened the door of the dilapidated apartment, only to see a vague figure disappearing at the corner of the alley together with the brass-colored steam pipe in the corner under the red and blue double moons. It’s a bit cold in Nolan City in August, and Mr. Hardy shivered and ignored it.”
Jenkins sighed, half of his face was illuminated by the light from the fireplace, and the other half was hidden in shadow.
I don't know if his story is too substituting, or Miss Hesha's ability has played a role, even if the story has just begun, the audience has already had an uneasy expression on their faces.
"For several days in a row, that strange bang bang bang sounded every night on time. This sound reminded Mr. Hardy of someone slapping the ground vigorously with their palms. This sound appeared more and more frequently, more and more The more dense it is, the more Mr. Hardy becomes uneasy. Especially, in his sleep at night, he always dreams of someone lying in front of his window and watching him fall asleep."
As expected, there was a soft exclamation, and Jenkins thought the atmosphere was pretty good.
Hiding in the shadow of his body with his hanging right hand, he tapped the ground lightly—[Frost Fist]!
Only minimal spirits were used, but the temperature has made a difference. Jenkins was concerned about being discovered, so the change was very slight.
"Aunt Suzanne told me that Mr. Hardy was getting more and more haggard during those days, and he found that the figure wandering outside his house every day looked like a dead lover. One evening, in extreme panic, he made up his mind to find himself The church of faith asked for help, but the church closed very early that night, and he didn't dare to stay on the street for too long, so he had to go back home in a carriage.
The coachman heard about this, and he told Mr. Hardy a little "common sense": the evil spirit can only maintain the posture before death, and the poor lady lay stretched on the ground when she died, that is to say, she could not bend down . Therefore, as long as you hide under the bed, you can hide from the evil spirits.
"He ran forward in a hurry, ran, and fled all the way home, but the sound of bang bang bang was behind him and never disappeared. In the end, Mr. Hardy managed to hide under the bed, and he didn't dare to ask From the outside, I could only turn my back in the dark and hear the sound of bang bang getting closer and closer, and finally stopped by the bed."
PS: You should have heard this story, right
Another: In this serious religious world, telling Cthulhu-like stories will definitely be labeled as heresy, or suspected to be related to evil gods. Although judging from the life of the protagonist in the story, the church is very enlightened. But the premise of this is that Jenkins is the church's "own person". Everyone has a lot of brains, but publicizing unknowable evils in public, in this novel, the logic does not hold...